ShadowProtect Desktop 5

By PCMag Australia PCMag Australia

5 Sep 2013, 6:25 a.m.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Wizards

ShadowProtect Desktop’s opening screen lets you choose three simple options. Each one launches a wizard that requires you to make some fairly knowledgeable choices, but most users will have no trouble.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Backup Source

Choose the partition or partitions that you want to backup from this menu. If this list isn’t clear enough, click one of the icons on the right end of the bar above the partition list to switch to a map view.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Backup Source Map

On complex systems, this map view may make it easier to figure out which partitions to choose.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Backup Destination

Next, choose a location where you want to store your backup, either locally or across a network.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Schedule

The schedule menu lets you choose among any of multiple backup strategies.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Advanced

An Advanced button on the Options tab leads to retention policies and other features useful to experts.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Summary

This summary tab explains exactly what options you’ve chosen, with an option to “Execute Now” even if you’ve scheduled the backup to begin later.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Restore List

Image-restore options closely mirror the options for backups, complete with similar lists or maps of drives and partitions.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Restore Map

For safety, when you restore a partition to a disk, the app shows you a map, not a list, of partitions so that it’s always clear what will be overwritten by a restore operation.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Explore

A simple dialog makes it possible to view a backup image as if it were a real drive, with an option to make the image “writable”—but the help page explains that what is written is actually a file containing changes to the backup, because the original backup image is never changed and can’t be changed.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Rescue Disk Start

ShadowProtect has an exceptionally well-designed wizard for building a bootable rescue disk that can be saved to CD or a USB stick.

ShadowProtect Desktop : Building Disk

This progress report shows the stages of rescue-disk building. At the end, you’re prompted to write the image to disk.